Crawling till the end
Everything was going according to that plan, however, things changed “a little bit” once the race started: Beto had a sudden rush of adrenaline and told me he wanted to run the full marathon. I told him that it was a fantastic idea and offered to pace him all along the course, no matter how slow he ran.
A couple of hours later, around the 20th km, he was jogging extremely slow. So slow that I could walk normally by his side and still be able to pass him. Cramps started to threaten him as well as the sweep buses which were getting closer to us. By the 25th km he opted to bail from the race, he encouraged me to finish the race alone and at a better pace. So I did…
I got back into running, passing a lot of the runners who were in the back of the pack. I felt well of recovering the pace I had at the beginning of the race. It lasted until the 35th km. From there I jogged/power walked the rest of the course, I wasn’t feeling strong anymore. The dire consequences of having only 4 short (~12 km) runs since returning from the Leadville Trail 100 a month ago…
At the 41st km I went through the wall and got back into running. Beto was waiting for me a few meters before the finish line, which we crossed together. I wasn’t very happy at all, I could have done a better race if I had trained properly…
